Demon Trap
by Colleen
Summary: If Battousai really was a demon, then how did that come to be?


Disclaimer: Watsuki Nobuhiro and a whole lot of other people that do not include myself own Rurouni Kenshin. I will make no money from this work of fanfiction and I'm just borrowing the characters and will return them in good condition. Please, no suing.

Author's note: I actually started this over 4 years ago and then it and everything else I was writing just jammed shut. I have been trying to write again and last year this came loose and I was able to continue it to where I have now decided to consider it completed. It has the potential for a sequel but that may never happen.

Dialogue that is directly from Rurouni Kenshin is taken from Maigo-chan's translations of the manga.

Summary: If Battousai really was a demon, then how did that come to be?

Rating: Teen, I think.

Started February 19th, 2003 (yes over 4 years ago)

Finished November 6th 2006

'thoughts'

:thoughts:

Demon Trap

By Colleen

The demon licked the blood from its claws and watched with glowing amber eyes from behind the bars of its prison as the servants dragged away the body of the foolish magician. The other eight wizards looked at the mess that had been made of one of their own, their emotions running the gambit through fear and horror to disdain.

The demon enjoyed the fear and horror but he understood the disdain better. After all the idiot would still be alive if he'd just stayed out of his reach.

"I hope he wasn't one of your more powerful and wise sorcerers, no wait, yes I do," the demon's laugh, although far from harsh, caused the eight men to cringe and their servants to fall to the floor screaming which just made him laugh even harder.

"SILENCE."

The demon brought the noise down to a snicker. "Ah, and here I thought you had a sense of humour." The demon smirked at the old man, becoming annoyed when the magician failed to react. Of all the wizards gathered here he was the one the demon was most worried about. He was powerful enough and smart enough to be a problem. Still, the demon mused, he can't be that bright, not if he actually thought he could bind him for any real length of time.

The wizard stepped forward, stopping just out of reach and made a mostly successful attempt to smirk right back at the demon. "I realized some time ago that this had been a mistake. While you are powerful you are also uncontrollable."

"I guess that means you really wish you hadn't raised me in the first place?" The idiots had actually believed that they could just yank him out of hell and he would bow and scrape and do their bidding. Instead he'd fought the summoning all the way and had been angry enough by the time he'd risen from the pit that he managed to kill three of them with a single blast of power. Unfortunately even that small amount of distraction had given the other nine a chance to bind him in a cage of thought and magic.

Their leader, the old man, had tried several times over the last month to force the demon's will to bend to his, but to no avail. Finally, thankfully, the wizard had left him alone. At the end of three days of solitude in which the demon had tried his best to break the caging spell, the sorcerer and his brothers had filed back in. After placing three unconscious women, a knife with a stone blade and a large cloth covered bundle on the large black stone alter that sat in the centre of the room they'd taken up positions around the monster and began to chant. The demon had been bored enough that he'd actually bothered to pay attention to the goings on and after following the spell for a while noticed that one of the sorcerers had committed the unpardonable sin of moving to close to him.

And after all, punishing sinners was his job.

--------000--------

"Well, if you've finally admitted your mistake then I take it you'll be sending me back to hell, posthaste."

The old man snorted, " and suffer the possibility that you might somehow come back after us, or worse, that you'll be waiting for us in hell when we die? I don't think so. No, we created you and we will destroy you."

"Old man, you didn't create me, you called me from someplace else and," the demon looked down at the red smear that started at the cage and ran the length of the room, "I seem to be the one doing the destroying."

"I have to thank you for waiting until we were just about finished before disembowelling the young man, I'm not sure just the eight of us would have been enough to bring the spell to this point otherwise."

The demon narrowed his eyes at the sorcerer, "and just what in hell is that supposed to mean old man?"

"Oh dear, I thought you were paying attention, surely you recognised the spell? Oh, of course you haven't seen all the ingredients have you?"

At a signal from the wizard two of the servants pulled the cloth away from the bundle on the alter. Somehow the demon wasn't surprised to find that it was a child. A boy in fact, with long red hair and an aura of innocence that was so strong the demon found it almost painful to look at him. He'd guessed that whatever was under there would be human and he'd assumed that it and the three women laying on the alter would be sacrificed at the correct moment to raise power for the spell.

Wait, that didn't make sense.

What they had been casting was a fairly formidable binding spell but it shouldn't need a human sacrifice to power it. All it would need would be an object to tie the demon to. The demon looked at the child again, the significance of the boy's hair colour combined with this spell hitting him between his startled eyes.

"NO!"

The wizard smiled, his face turning skeletal for a moment as he said the word that would finish the spell.

"Noooooooooooooo!"

--------000--------

When Shinta woke his head was a whirl of exhaustion and fragmented dreams that made his skull feel like it was splitting in two. He was surprised to find himself on a small western style bed in a sunlit room rather then the slab of stone in the dark cold place he had been dreaming of. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and sat up, weaving slightly as he waited for his sense of balance to return. His instincts were to go find the three girls that had been sold to this place with him but a look at his ankle confirmed that it was manacled and chained to the bed as it had been every night since he'd been bought. He sighed and made himself as comfortable as possible while waiting for one of the servants to come and release him for the day.

He found it strange that they were so afraid he might run away, especially since he had no where to go. This place was...odd but so far it seemed better then what he had been told would be waiting for him in Kyoto. He had little illusions about that as the slave runners had enjoyed explaining in detail what would happen to them once they were sold. Much to Shinta's relief none of the people here had tried anything like that.

When three of the strange men who lived here entered his room instead of the servant that had been taking care of him Shinta wondered if his last thought was about to put to the test. He looked at their faces, expecting to see cruelty or that other look he'd seen lately, the one he didn't completely understand despite the slavers graphic explanations. The look that, even without full comprehension still made his blood run cold. Instead he saw wariness and even...fear. Shinta's mouth went dry and he turned on the bed, looking behind himself. He gave a sigh of relief when he didn't find a monster or something even scarier behind him. Embarrassed he turned back, expecting the three men to be laughing at his reaction to their little joke.

They looked even more afraid of him.

"I need to go to the bathroom." The boy quietly told them, hoping that something so simple would snap them out of whatever was going on. Instead the three men jumped a little and one of them even started to tremble.

Shinta was really scared now. He didn't think it was right for anyone to be afraid of him, especially three grown men and he was getting worried that they might bolt and leave him chained up forever.

"Please," he asked plaintively.

Nodding slightly the middle man approached the boy and Shinta's eyes grew wide when he saw the metal collar and chain he was holding. The man carefully reached forward and placed the band around the boy's neck before locking it in place and yanking his hands back, as if afraid the child would bite his fingers off.

Backing up along the chain that was attached to the collar the man reached a spot where he must have felt a little safer because he gave the line a tug, pulling Shinta over onto his side so that his head and feet were as far apart as his small body could manage. One of the other men quickly undid the ankle cuff and backed away before the chain went slack, allowing the boy to sit up again. He stood, carefully fighting the tremor that tried to run through his body and took a step towards the door. The three men backed up with him, making sure to never be closer to him then the length of the chain. And in this way was Shinta escorted to the bathroom and everywhere else he had to go that day.

--------000--------

Fuugo watched, amused as the servants that worked in this strange place kept a wary eye on the three girls he had sold to the masters of the house four days ago. They had fetched twice what he could have gotten from a brothel in Kyoto but the biggest surprise had been the kid. He would have fetched a pretty amount if sold to the right place but the slave master had never seen anyone as desperate for a particular slave as the people here. The kid had fetched three, maybe even four times more then he could have gotten elsewhere and the old man who led this clan had offered the slave master and his group hospitality and the possibility of even more money if they would escort the clans new purchases, the girls and the kid, to Kyoto. Of course a couple of the old man's men would be coming too but that just meant the trip would be safer with more people to guard the group. Besides it wasn't like it was out of his way as he had to go to Kyoto anyway to unload what was left of the slaves.

Fuugo wondering idly, as he had every day since he had sold this grouping just what the slaves would be used for once they reached Kyoto. At first he'd expected it to be the usual. Sex and service. However he wasn't getting that feeling from the people here. Still musing he noticed three of the buyers leading the boy around with a chain and collar.

So, it was the usual after all, albeit a somewhat more bent version of the usual. He smirked at the idea of the kid being kept as a pet and watched as they led him to the relief area and then into the kitchens for some food. By the time the foursome had disappeared so had the smirk. Fuugo shivered. The three men weren't treating the kid like a pet, rather they acted as if he were some wild animal they'd mistakenly attempted to tame and found they couldn't.

The slave master shook his discomfort off and went to check the supplies and packing for tomorrow. The faster they were away the next day the happier he would be and the sooner he got to Kyoto and was free of the whole mess the better.

--------000--------

The demon paced back and forward inside his new prison. At first he had shouted and railed against the idiot magicians but they and the young boy he was trapped in obviously couldn't hear him and all he was managing to do was give the kid a headache. If he could have figured out a way to kill the boy from inside his skull he would have but he had been rendered powerless, or nearly so.

Of course that was the point of the spell. Or rather his complete destruction was the point.

The demon screamed in aggravation, not even noticing that he'd come close to driving the child he was stuck in to his knees in pain. How the hell had those morons found a red headed child in Japan for hell's sake. It ought to have been just about impossible.

The spell had originated in a culture that believed that redheads were sacred and whether they were or not really didn't matter because something about them, especially when they housed an innocent soul, was powerful enough to trap and hold a demon. Worse yet he was certain that the three girls had been tied into the spell as well. Their sacrifices would further meld him and the boy, allowing the wizards to destroy the demon by ritually killing the child.

Therefore his only hope for escape lay in getting the kid killed before then.

--------000--------

Fuugo stomped along at the front of the group. This trip already wasn't worth the money he would get for it. It was just one aggravation after another.

First the two idiots that were coming with them (he'd already forgotten their names and had taken to referring to them as morons one and two in his mind) had been late and given the clothes they were wearing would have been a magnet for every bandit from here to Kyoto. So they'd had to wait for them while they changed into something that wouldn't be quite so noticeable. The slave master still wasn't completely happy about them but both men were carrying swords (plain ones, he'd made them switch those as well) and they looked menacing enough with them.

Then there was the kid. At first they had wanted to keep him collared and chained but he'd vetoed that. It was just too weird and besides it would have kept the two of them with the boy, rendering them useless should they have to fight or run. He had them release the child and stuck him in the middle of the three girls, telling them to look after him and him to look after them. In that way all four of them would stay out of trouble and he wouldn't have to watch morons one and two trying not to wet their pants as they led the kid around.

He gave a little sigh and worried at the question that had been haunting him since yesterday. Why the hell were they so afraid of him anyway?

The slave master chewed on the question for a while but since no answer was forthcoming he gave up on it. He set his mind to more important things, like should they press on now that the sky was starting to darken or should they make camp? He looked back down the line at everyone. His people and the slaves he had left were fine, the three girls and the kid were fine, and the two morons...were sweating and throwing scared glances at the kid while they tried to stay as close to him from as far away as possible.

That was it, there was no way he was stopping until he got rid of this group. He didn't care if they didn't make it into Kyoto until dawn. He would get them there and get his money and if he were really lucky he would never deal with them again. As much as he loved money the slave master suspected that a continuing alliance with these people would just get him killed and his life was the one thing he wanted more than the money. After all you couldn't spend it if you were dead.

--------000--------

The current leader of the bandits watched the strung out group of slave runners and slaves and debated whether or not they should attack. Usually a group like this wouldn't have much by way of money or goods until they had unloaded their human cargo but this group seemed different. The carts were fuller than usual and two of the men didn't belong with the group. Their clothing, although plain, was of a much better quality then what the others wore. They also seemed intent on a small cluster of the slaves and that made the leader suspect that they had or were going to buy them. Either way it meant that they or the slavers could have the purchase price on them.

The bandit had a natural instinct for picking out rich targets, it was the reason he was currently the leader. True, something about this party sent off warning signals in his brain but that same something also told him that this was the strike they had been waiting for. The lure of money being greater then safety the leader held his men back only until the group reached the ambush site then signalled the attack. With a ragged cry and unsheathed swords his band charged the caravan.

--------000--------

When the bandits attacked the demon could have hugged them. He might have even hugged the wizards because he suspected that their presence had a lot to do with the attack. Why else would anyone attack slavers, the only thing they ever had of worth was people and the only thing that bandits usually did with them was kill them. But those two, even dressed down they still looked like they had money.

The bandits were truly vicious. They cut down anyone that moved, even if that movement was an attempt to escape. The demon was briefly worried that the wizards would manage to resist magically but their stupidity continued unabated and they chose to fight physically. To give them their due the two of them were decent swordsmen but they were unable to defend against the thieves brutality. The sorcerers would have won two times out of three in a match but in a real battle all the other side needed was that one time.

The demon briefly worried that the slave traders might manage to put the bandits down but they also were not prepared for such an intense attack and it was with a sigh of relief when he saw the last of them, their leader if memory served, go down. Now all that was left was the three girls and the boy and once they were dead he would be free.

And then the kid picked up a sword.

Mentally the demon froze, surprised at both himself and the boy. The child's courage and need to protect were so strong that if he could have focused it as power not only would he have taken out the bandits in front of him he would have also reduced just about everything for the next hundred metres to ash. That and for a second the demon found himself cheering for the boy rather than for the boy's death. He snapped out of it a moment later and by then the girls had grabbed the child, stopping him. They threw themselves into the path of oncoming death for him, pleaded with the killers to spare him and beseeched the boy to live on for them.

They tried to shield him from the sight of their deaths.

As each of them died both the demon and Shinta felt it, although the boy didn't understand what was going on. The girls were linked to them and each death pulled and weaved the demon and child closer together. At any other time it would have scared Shinta but his emotions were so overloaded that he couldn't pull up enough concern for anything that was happening to him. The last death finished the job and if the wizards had been here to complete the spell then the demon would have been destroyed with the boy's death. In its unfinished state it would leave the demon free as soon as Shinta was dead.

And then it all went to hell.

As one of the bandits raised his sword to dispatch the child the short, cut off screams of his companions suddenly diverted his attention. The demon watched in dismayed silence as a lone man in a long white cape took down the killers, leaving only the one closest to the boy.

'No, no, no,' the demon thought. 'Kill the kid first then take care of the guy in the cape.' The thug instead turned, asking the swordsman who he was.

The swordsman told him that it wouldn't do any good to tell his name to the dead.

The demon had seen a lot of dismemberments before but he didn't think that he'd ever seen someone taken apart so fast. As soon as the bandit leapt into the swordsman's circle he was sliced into four, or perhaps even five large pieces. At that speed even the demon couldn't count the flying body parts fast enough.

The only thing he was sure of was that he'd just lost his chance to escape.

--------000--------

Hiko wiped the blood from his sword as he looked down at the small boy. "I have taken your revenge for you." He gave the boy a moment to reply but wasn't really surprised when he didn't react. "No matter how much you hate or suffer you can't bring the dead back to life. Just be glad to be alive. There is a village close by, go there and tell them what happened, they'll find some way for you to make a living." He sheathed his sword and walked away, leaving the boy kneeling in the bodies of the slain.

--------000--------

Shinta concentrated on breathing. He breathed in and out about fifty times following the tall man's departure then pushed his hands into the dirt in front of him and started to dig. When it got too hard going for his hands he picked up the sword he had dropped previously and used it to break up the dirt before moving it away with his hands once again.

The demon watched this quietly, until the boy had gotten about two feet below the surface, then mentally shook his head.

'Does he really intend to bury the girls?' He thought.

"Yes, I do," the boy said quietly.

If the demon had had control of the body he would have jumped. 'You heard me?'

"Yes." Shinta said, continuing to dig. "Why do you want me dead?" He asked.

The demon blinked. 'Ah, aren't you curious as to who I am?'

"Not really." Shinta paused in his digging only long enough to pick up the sword once again, using it to break up the thin layer of clay he had reached.

'I'm a demon.'

The boy froze for a moment as a wave a terror attempted to sweep over him but not even that could hold him and it crashed harmlessly against his mind, repelled by the horrors he had just witnessed.

"Are you here to punish me because I couldn't protect them?" The boy asked as he continued with his digging.

Actually horrified that the child would even consider blaming himself for what had just happened the demon was stunned into silence. Briefly he considered running with it. If he worked it right he could probably have the kid committing suicide within the hour. He watched the boy for a few moments, opened his mouth to tell him that yes, it was all his fault and froze once again as he realized that he couldn't do it.

He wasn't a tempter, rather it was his job to help with the punishing of those who had sinned, not those who were innocent. And if there was anything that this child was it was innocent.

Shinta kept digging but each second that the demon didn't answer something inside of him pulled tighter and tighter and was just starting to crack when he got his answer.

'No, I am not here to punish you and none of this is your fault,' the voice, strangely gentle, told him.

"Then," Shinta asked, "why do you want me dead?"

The demon sighed, and searched through his memories until he found a good place to start. 'A little over a month ago a group of sorcerers decided that they could increase their power by binding a demon. Unfortunately for them and me I was that demon.'

"Unfortunately?"

'Yes. There are lots of demons that would jump at the chance to get out of hell but I am not one of them." Especially, he thought, if it meant serving a bunch two bit conjurors that think they're actually high level wizards.

'When they realized they couldn't control me they must have started to look for a way to destroy me instead.' The demon stopped and contemplated the child as he continued to dig. 'How did you end up with the wizards anyway?'

"The slavers stopped at the compound to see if they wanted to buy any of us. The clan leader, the old one, was there and was looking the girls over. When he saw me he got very quiet and then he grabbed the slave master and they went off to have tea and do business. The next thing I know the girls and I were being shown to rooms and were even given servants to look after us." Shinta stopped digging for a moment as an old thought resurfaced. "They seemed to be very afraid that we might run away, especially me."

'Yes, they would have been. The old man must have just about wet himself when he saw you.' The boy kept digging but the demon could tell that this piece of news had disturbed him. It took a moment for him to realize why. Damnation only knew what the slavers had told the boy he would be used for once purchased but it had probably been cruelly detailed and unpleasant. 'They needed a redheaded child to bind me,' he explained to him, hoping that the boy wouldn't suddenly blame himself for the hair as well, 'and three girls tied to the spell as well so that when they were killed their deaths would merge us further, which is why you can hear me now and why I can feel your emotions.'

Shinta stopped digging and went back to just breathing. "They were going to kill the girls?"

The demon was finding the boy difficult to understand, he never seemed interested in following the path that involved him alone. Instead he always worried about the others. 'They intended to kill you as well, because killing you would destroy me.' As the demon thought, the news of his own planned death didn't disturb the child much at all.

"If killing me would kill you then why..."

'Why would I want you dead? Because to destroy me they would have to kill you using the right weapon,' his mind briefly brought up the vision of a stone bladed knife that had been on the alter next to Shinta and through their link shared it with the boy, 'at the right time and at the right place, or at least the right power base. If you died before that happened I would be released.'

"What would you do if you were free?" Shinta asked as he moved over to start a second grave and took up digging again.

The demon smiled at the images the question brought to him. While he spoke the truth about not wanting to escape from hell he knew that he wouldn't return right away. Not when the wizards were waiting for him to introduce them to a little hell on earth. But what to tell the boy?

"Would you do bad things if you were free?" Shinta asked when he didn't get an answer right away.

The demon surprised himself by opting for the truth, suspecting that the boy would sense a lie. They were already too well meshed to get away with much. "Well, if you call seeing how long a wizard can live without his skin a bad thing then yes I guess I intend to do some bad things. Once that was done I would simply go back where I belong.'

The boy said nothing and the demon let him think about it, choosing to spend the next few hours watching in silence as the child lit a lantern that he salvaged from the cart and finished the second and third graves. He remained a quite guest as the boy dragged and pushed the bodies of the three girls to their new homes. Shinta filled in the graves with care and went in search of stones to use as funeral markers.

There weren't many rocks around and Shinta finally settled on three stones, smaller and more misshapen then he would have liked but there wasn't anything else other then a lot of twigs and branches. He placed them at the head of each grave and then picking up the sword and lantern moved several paces away before starting to dig again.

'YOU'RE GOING TO BURY ALL OF THEM?'

Shinta dropped to his knees, his face and body folding up in pain at the demons angry mental shout. His fingers clenched up around the hilt of the sword that was currently buried halfway into the earth and he panted slightly as he rode out the feeling that he'd just had the weapon he was holding shoved through his brain. His small frame shook slightly as he realized that it probably wouldn't take much for the stranger riding in his head to kill him.

And he had something he wanted to finish before that happened.

"Yes, I'm going to bury them all," he said as he levered himself to his feet and freed the sword from the ground before using it to break up the dirt with a stabbing motion.

The Demon was silent for a few minutes and Shinta jumped slightly when he spoke.

"Why?"

Shinta shook his head and dropped the sword in favour of using his hands once again.

"Why? I can understand the girls but the rest of these guys are just..."

"Dead," Shinta answered quietly. "They are all dead and whatever they once were doesn't matter anymore, they're just bodies now and bodies need to be buried.

The demon, if he'd currently owned a physical body, would have been looking at the boy in an uncomprehending and shocked silence.

Shinta picked up the sword once again but instead of using as he had been he lifted the blade until it ran vertically in front of his face. He stared at the cutting edge sadly and then closed his eyes and bowed his head.

"Allow me to do this and then I will give you your freedom," Shinta said before turning the blade back to the business of digging graves.

"Kid I know you don't want to die." The demon told him.

"No," Shinta said quietly, "I do not, but I don't know of any other way to let you go and... you could probably kill me or at least make me wish I were dead," the boy said, massaging the space between his eyes that still throbbed from the demon's shout.

The demon mulled the boy's statement over. The kid was right in that he could make his life a living hell but the child's innocent soul bound the demon from intentionally killing him.

But then, the demon thought to himself, the kid doesn't actually know that now does he?

--------000--------

The hours passed into morning and afternoon with the Demon silent while Shinta continued on with his grim task. The boy took the creature's quiet to mean that they had come to an agreement. He would finish the graves and then end his life. He briefly wondered if the demon might remain long enough to add one more grave to the plot of ground he worked.

The boy worked through the day, stopping only long enough to rummage through the scattered supplies for enough food and water to keep his strength up. His companion kept quiet through all of this until it came time to bury the wizards.

The demon mentally tilted his head to one side as he contemplated the two bodies. The kid was...kind of right, he thought to himself. Dead was dead and he couldn't be bothered to waste his energy hating what was already gone, still...

'We need to search them.'

The kid jumped. He really ought to stop doing that to the boy but he didn't think clearing a throat he no longer had would be any better warning than just talking.

Shinta looked at the corpses uneasily. It was one thing to move them to their graves but to actually go through their clothing seemed...wrong.

"Why?"

'I need to know if they have the knife.'

Once again an image of a stone blade resting on an alter floated through Shinta's mind.

'It's what they were going to destroy me with. I have to know if it's here.'

Gingerly the child searched the bodies of the two men. He even managed to turn them over, rolling them a little closer to their new homes.

But there was no knife.

'Hmmm, maybe in their luggage.' The demon attempted to give Shinta's vision a yank in the direction of the wagon and gnashed nonexistent teeth together when he couldn't even manage that much control over the body they were now sharing.

Shinta looked in the direction he had been trying for anyway and the demon took in the scattered and broken remains of the caravan members private possessions. Trying to find the knife in that mess would be as difficult as finding a snowball in his former place of residence. So if he couldn't find it then probably no one else could and it wasn't worth the effort when freedom was only a few days away. Pulling his mind away from the problem he returned to watching the kid dig graves.

The demon wondered how much longer the kid would last at his task. Although the boy still worked with quiet efficiency he could feel the effort it was taking for him to keep moving. He expected the child to collapse at any moment. Instead he defied even a demons expectations of how long someone so small could take on physically torturing labour and worked until the sun was a bare slit of light on the horizon.

Shinta studied the finished graves and the work he still had to do and rubbed at his face tiredly, streaking dirt and red clay across his features. The mounds of dirt that identified each resting place seemed wrong. It took him a long moment to realize that the problem was that they really ought to have grave markers, only there weren't anymore stones worth using.

'Use crosses.'

Shinta jumped slightly at the demon's first words in hours.

"Crosses?" He asked uncertainly.

"The Christians use them sometimes to mark their dead," the demon told him, deciding to avoid further explaining the importance that a cross held. It would be too difficult to put into plain words and he most definitely wasn't the one to be teaching such subjects anyway. "All you need is a couple of branches and something to bind them together where they cross.

Shinta looked wearily around his graveyard. There was certainly enough wood and the thin rope that had once tied down the supplies on the cart would work for the binding. If he worked through the night he might be able to make enough for both the finished graves and those he still had to dig.

'It can wait until tomorrow kid.'

"No," the boy said, blinking his eyes against his body's attempt to close them. "I promised to let you go so I have to..."

'Tomorrow,' the demon said. 'You already used up the one lantern you had last night and it will be too dark to see in a few more minutes. A few more hours won't matter to anyone.'

"But..."

'I can wait,' he said, his voice somehow gruffly annoyed and softly concerned at the same time.

The boy gave a little sigh of acceptance, nodded his head in thanks, and dropped where he was standing. He was asleep before he even hit the ground.

For about the first hour or so after Shinta fell asleep the demon worked to move the body, hoping that he might gain some control while the child was asleep.

He might have made him twitch once, but he couldn't really be certain.

Giving it up as a bad job the demon amused himself for a few more hours thinking up new ways to inflict pain on unsuspecting wizards.

_Playing with a top._

'What?'

_Making it spin, and spin, and spin. _

Mentally the demon blinked that image out of his eyes. 'What the hell was that?'

_As long as he watched it spin he wouldn't have to look up._

Ah crap, the kid was dreaming, and he had a front row seat for it.

_He wouldn't have to see Tou-san and Kaa-san lying there next to the girls. He wouldn't have to start digging new holes to bury them all again._

'Kid, wake up.'

_But he couldn't not look up._

'Kid!'

_But it was ok, because they weren't lying there. Tou-san, Kaa-san, and the girls were sitting up, watching him watch the top. He smiled at them..._

Ah, maybe he should just leave the kid to the dream, it didn't seem that bad.

_And they smiled back, grins spreading wide across their faces as flesh rotted away to expose teeth locked in the agony of their deaths._

'KID!'

With a choking sob Shinta wrenched himself out of sleep.

"Bad, bad, bad..."

'It's okay kid it was just a drea...'

"I," the boy choked on his pain again. "I didn't mean to."

'What????'

"I didn't...I didn't want to think of them like that. I don't," the boy's voice dropped into a whisper that ached with self loathing. "I don't want to remember them that way."

'Oh for crying out loud!'

The boy cringed away from the voice in his head as if it were a raised fist.

The demon winced at the reaction and then winced again at his own response. What the hell did he care if the kid was in pain and stupid enough to blame himself for things he couldn't control?

But he did care. Crap.

'Kid...'

"Shinta."

'What?'

The boy snuffled slightly and wiped the tears from his eyes with the backs of his hands.

"My name is Shinta."

The demon huffed slightly in amusement at the knowledge that he had been riding around in the kid's brain for a couple of days without even bothering to know his name.

The boy seemed to be waiting for something and the demon realized that in a situation like this (assuming there were many situations like this) that an exchange of names was probably called for.

'Shinta,' the boy felt movement in his head, almost as if his visitor had bowed.

'I am afraid I cannot give you my name in return. I am not an important enough demon to have one.'

"Oh, then what should I call you?"

A mental shrug. "Demon will do. Now unless you've decided to give up on completing this graveyard I suggest you try to get some more sleep."

"I..."

'Kid, Shinta you did nothing wrong. You can't control your dreams, in fact dreams like that are meant to help you work through the bad stuff, whether you want to or not.'

"So, I'll have more of them?"

A brief hesitation. 'Probably,' the demon replied, lying not really being one of his habits, not when the truth usually hurt so much more. Something inside winced at hurting the kid again but he put it aside for the moment. Let the kid get back to sleep first and then he would see if he could figure out why he cared.

'Not sleeping will only make it worse when you do sleep and you need to recover some of your strength if you're going to finish those graves.'

The boy nodded and then curled up on the ground. The night was silent for a few moments before the boy spoke. "Demon san?"

'Hmmmm?'

The boy took in a breath, heart thudding in his chest. "When I finish the graves, when I let you go..."

'Yes?'

A slight gulp from the boy. "Would you stay long enough to bury me as well."

The boy waited several minutes for an answer, when none seemed forthcoming he curled himself into a tighter ball and fought off the tears that stung at his eyes.

'Yes, I will.'

--------000--------

The boy was finally able to go back to sleep after that, a fact that in many ways disturbed the demon. With a mental shake of his head he put his strange worry aside and spent the nights last few hours trying to figure out just what was wrong with him.

It had to have something to do with the spell.

It was a binding spell, it connected him to the child. The child was an innocent so he couldn't hurt him directly but that shouldn't have him not wanting to hurt the kid, it shouldn't have him...dare he even think it, wanting to protect the kid.

If the wizards got their hands on the kid, got him to a place of power and killed him with that thrice cursed stone knife then the demon would be killed with him.

No, that wasn't quite right. Demons don't really die, therefore they would have to destroy him by releasing the energy that he was made up of. And if the binding spell was to work he would have had to have been bound to the kid's soul and that would mean...

That damned knife would do more than kill the kid it would shred his soul, shatter it until there was nothing left of him and in doing so it would shatter the demon as well.

Ok, not good but it still didn't explain the not wanting to hurt the kid thing.

If the kid died a normal death, even if he killed himself the demon would be freed and the boy's soul would go off to wherever but at least it would still exist.

So getting the kid killed would be helping him.

Nope, that set of logic still didn't work. The mere thought of the kid dieing twisted something in him that he'd never even known existed.

What hadn't he thought of?

Start at the beginning. Bind boy to him, sacrifice girls to complete binding to soul...sacrifice girls.

Crap.

The girls technically had been sacrificed, it had completed the binding, however their deaths here were different then they would have been at wherever the final working was supposed to take place.

Here they had been willing sacrifices, sacrifices made so the boy could live, their words for him to do just that had set the spell into its final shape as they died.

He was bound to him to help him live.

Well, hell.

--------000--------

The days passed and the demon stayed mostly quiet as the boy finished the graves and fashioned crosses for them. With the last cross in place Shinta stood in front of the only three graves with stone markers, to say his goodbyes.

The demon still didn't know what to do.

"You dug graves not just for your parents but the bandits too?"

The demon mentally jumped as the swordsman in white came up behind them. The boy didn't move although that may have just been because he was too tired.

"They weren't my parents." Shinta told him quietly. "They were slavers. My parents died last year of cholera. But even bandits and slavers are only bodies when they die . . . so I made them graves."

The swordsman came up beside the boy and looked down at the three stones. "These three stones?"

"Kasumi san, Akane san and Sakura san." The boy named the girls in his quiet voice. "They were taken from their families because of debts. I only met them a short time before, but I was the only boy and we didn't have any parents. I thought even if it cost me my life, I had to protect them."

"But . . ."

"I looked for good stones for their graves but these were the only ones I could find. I looked for flowers too, but I couldn't find any . . ."

The swordsman uncorked the bottle of sake he was carrying and poured some over each of the stones.

"Man or woman, it would be a shame to attain Buddhahood without knowing the taste of good sake. It's an offering from me." He turned to look at Shinta.

"What's your name, boy?"

Shinta looked up at him, a little startled.

"Shinta . . ."

"That's no name for a swordsman. From now on, you're called Kenshin. I'll teach you all I know."

Shinta opened his mouth to protest but was stopped by the other voice in his head.

'Go with him kid.'

"Wha..."

'Don't say anything out loud to me, just think it in your head.' It wouldn't do for the kid to freak out mister tall, dark and deadly, not when he could be the fix to the problem they were both currently faced with.

: I...I can't go with him, I promised you that...:

'I can wait kid.'

: But...:

'I. Can. Wait. Time doesn't really mean the same thing to a demon as it does to a human, you'll live what, another eighty, ninety years if you're lucky? It's nothing to me, just long enough to get in a good nap in fact. So go with him.'

: But the wizards...:

'Will still be there. If they're alive after all that time, which with wizards is possible, then I'll find them. If they're dead, well, I know where they'll be and they can enjoy the scenery until I get to them.'

'Live your life Shinta, you have a right to it.' Not to mention that the best way to let the spell run its course would be to let him live it. If it wasn't for the fact that the tall swordsman was more dangerous than all the wizards he'd recently faced put together he'd have considered kissing the guy. If he had nothing else, he had good timing. 'I'll get mine back soon enough, now let me get some sleep.'

Shinta's mouth mentally hung open for a moment or two.

: Thank you.:

The boy looked up into the swordsman's face and carefully said his new name.

"Ken...shin."

And he went with him.

Owari.


End file.
